


Tasha, Reborn

by PinkRangerV



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universes, Gen, Hiking, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, tazer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 15:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkRangerV/pseuds/PinkRangerV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quantum physics is a strange, strange thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tasha, Reborn

**Author's Note:**

> So I recently got on Tumblr (I'm slow, sue me) and found this (http://pinkrangerv.tumblr.com/post/75070135026/fanfic-prompt-ive-always-had-a-mission-it) and this (http://pinkrangerv.tumblr.com/post/75068701520/four-sentence-fanfiction-the-shadow-struck-the) along with four-sentence-fanfiction and the entire Tasha Yar tag. And the bunnies bit.
> 
> Also, the Ilenthya bit and concept here are things from my original work Alvinia's universe. Please, please don't use it in any for-profit work without contacting me first, because if I have to rewrite an entire series I'm going to probably snap and commit homicide.

Death didn’t take long.

 

Well, if you define ‘death’ as ‘separating my soul from my body’, anyway. A soul, hunh. Who’dve thought I even _had_ one? I just never had time to think about it, to be honest. Guess it’s proved itself now--I _felt_ myself snapping out of my body and into that thing.

 

And then there was this brilliant flash of light, and I wasn’t dead at all.

 

***

 

I woke up in my bed, went to work at my job, and it took me almost half a day for the nagging feeling to settle in. I was Natasha Robsson and I worked for an insurance company. I could--I still _can_ \--remember my childhood, my rebellious adolescent years…

 

On Earth. In the year 2012, with no apocalypse.

 

That felt so _wrong_ and so _unreal_ and I tried to shake it off. Early morning runs, long workouts...it’s easy to distract yourself, right? Ha, no. I could shut it up a bit, but I couldn’t really change what I felt. I couldn’t even mask it, to be honest. I just calmed down.

 

Finally I just went outside. Really outside, not just the commute to and from work or to the gym. I went outside and walked down one of the long lonely back roads, and ended up finding this tiny park, and I looked out over the burning desert.

 

Dayton, Nevada, in the distant future, is a spaceport.

 

In my future.

 

And I was there yesterday.

 

***

 

“Hey, what’re you doing out here, kid?”

 

“Walking.”

 

“Water? ...It’s not poisoned. Go on, I’ve got plenty.”

 

“...Thank you.”

 

***

 

I’m not a rocket scientist, but I’m not stupid either. The multiple-worlds theory made the most sense. It boils down to that, on the smallest possible level, most stuff can’t figure out where it is. So if you make a choice, there’s another universe where you did something else.

 

I was in an alternate history, and couldn’t remember my own future.

 

There were these...glimpses. A green-yellow uniform. A phaser in my hand, when I held my TV remote. A kind of sense of friendship and laughter and someplace that was hard to believe was real but was. And this darkness, painful darkness, like there’s something really bad in my head, or maybe in my past.

 

I wondered who I was.

 

I could barely stay indoors anymore. There’s too much to _remember_ \--spaceships and aliens and all these _things_ , and sometimes I stayed out until almost midnight just watching the sky. I know the stars. I know what their real names are, who lives there, and I had this feeling, like I’ve been to some of them, or someone’s going to be at one soon…

 

The next time I saw the kid who didn’t bring water, she beckoned me over and showed me a ‘stream’ that runs up Six Mile Canyon. Treated wastewater and melted snow grew tall, proud trees in rocky soil. She said her name is Sam. I smiled and told her, like I tell everyone, to call me Nat.

 

Kind of nice to have a hiking buddy.

 

***

 

Someone in the office with very poor decision-making skills gave me some fireworks.

 

Let’s skip over that.

 

***

 

“ _Wow_.”

 

I looked up and saw Sam standing in the little park I’d set my telescope up in. I didn’t ask. Never did. “Wanna see the stars?”

 

Sam grinned. She hated coming near people, even me. I should’ve realized...but that time she came close to look. “The Seven Sisters?”

 

“What?”

 

“The Seven Sisters. There. Look from the side, they’re kind of clearer that way.” Sam straightened up and pointed at the stars I was looking at.

 

“I thought it was Karon 7.” Stupid of me, I realized that even as I opened my mouth. I mean, a full century in the past? Of course they’d call stars by different names…

 

Sam shook her head.

 

“So what do you call them?” I asked. I don’t know if I cared that much, I just hated seeing her clam up like that. She did it every time I contradicted her. Like she was scared of me.

 

“Um, I think they’re Messier objects. There was this guy…” Sam started, and somehow it turned into, an hour later, ancient myths and constellations, and me teaching Sam basic stellar geography and politics.

 

I shared my sandwich with Sam, and she pulled out a baggie with cookies.

 

Best cookies I’ve ever tasted.

 

***

 

“You know, you’re like Tasha.” Sam said once. I’d taken her on a hike and we were getting ice cream on the way back from the corner store. “Tasha Yar? From Star Trek?”

 

“Star Trek?” That was a geek show, right? “Never seen it.”

 

Sam shrugged. “It’s pretty cool. Tasha’s the security officer. She kicks ass. Then there’s Counselor Troi and Captain Picard and a whole bunch’a people…” Sam licked her ice cream. “You’d like it.”

 

“I’ll have to check it out.” I examined, in the distance, the mountain we conquered. “Hey, I think I can see that cliff from here!”

 

When I got home I flopped back and turned on Star Trek, just for the hell of it.

 

And I _remembered_.

 

***

 

The black gunk. It had sent me to another universe.

 

Was someone looking for me? That show didn’t get it right--it missed half my fights, made the Legonians look racist as hell, made Deanna waay more emotional than she normally is and Wes ten times as annoying--but if they thought I was dead…

 

Was I going insane?

 

It was a _TV show_. Fiction. Not reality. It couldn’t be real. None of it could be, that was just insane…maybe all of this was just some slow spiral into madness. Were my parents schizo? Maybe I got Uncle Ray’s genes.

 

Maybe this was all some horrible nightmare.

 

Something pulled at me. I’d never realized how much of a pull it was to go outside and explore. It was like something inside me got _yanked_ , almost.

 

I couldn’t move. There were too many demons screaming in my head.

 

After a while the pull stopped.

 

***

 

There’s nothing like having your period to make you realize how much you miss modern medicine. Or how much you want to take an axe to your skull to make the pain stop. Your pick.

 

I wasn’t up for long trips--or _moving_ , really--but when you wake up at four in the morning with a murder scene in your pants you kind of have to get to the store already. I got in my truck and rumbled down to the corner store and found Sam’s backpack.

 

Sam was curled up against a generator, fast asleep and her lips blue from cold.

 

Nothing like a bit of pure terror to give you the strength to lift a sixteen-year-old kid into your truck. I think my cramps even calmed down a little. “Hey. Hey, Sam, wake up!” Blankets, she needed something warm, my hands grabbed the blanket from my emergency kit almost without my input. When I tucked it over her I saw that the sleeve of one arm was brown. The hell?

 

Sam gasped and shoved a knife in my face.

 

“Whoa, whoa, it’s me!” What the…”Is that _blood_?” I took the knife out of Sam’s hand and reached for her arm.

 

She flinched. For a second we just looked at each other, and then Sam broke down crying. Her father and brother had been ‘fighting’ for months, and they’d gotten violent enough last night to scare Sam away from home. I took her to my house, got her patched up, and called the police. CPS showed up and Sam napped on my couch and we watched a few hours of mindless cartoons while I tried every painkiller combination I could think of.

 

The next day I woke up in a universe where small people with hairy feet had to take a ring to Mordor.

 

***

 

“And you can do this at will?”

 

I smile and hold up a hand. “Takes a bit of concentration, but…” I generate a small wormhole in the palm of Troi’s hand.

 

Captain Picard stares. “ _Fascinating_.”

 

I close the wormhole down. Leaving those open for a long time is a recipe for disaster.

 

“You mentioned there are...others. A society of some kind.” Commander Riker asks. I still can’t get over that _beard_. It just looks so ridiculous.

 

“They’re called Ilenthya.” I confirm. “People who are born...like this...well, there aren’t a lot of people who understand.”

 

“Born with the ability to sense and manipulate space-time itself.” Captain Picard says. I can hear a bit of jealousy. Trust me, Captain, you’ve got nothing to be jealous of. “And so the multiverse uses you to keep itself whole. A sort of multi-dimensional immune system, as it were. Amazing.”

 

“It’s not quite as fun as it sounds, sir.” I admit. “Most of the time I barely know what I’m doing. Sometimes I just need to go grocery shopping somewhere, or sit on a bench in a park.”

 

“And yet, to see so much.” Captain Picard smiles and shakes his head. “Lieutenant. What an amazing opportunity.”

 

“And to think we owe it to that little puddle of tar.” Riker jokes.

 

“Don’t remind me, sir.” That little shit. I dealt with _Jeoffry_ and he was better-behaved. Admittedly I kidnapped him and stuck him on a remote island until he’d learned to behave like a human being, but…

 

“Well, Lieutenant, from the sound of it we can hardly keep you here.” Captain Picard says. “I’m grateful that at least you’ve given us the chance to say goodbye.”

 

Damn the multiverse. It’s not the first time I’ve thought that either. I can go anywhere except home, where my body is dead and I had to ask Deanna to let me ‘ride along’ in her body. But I couldn’t resist, not when I ran into Wes. I missed my crew too much. “I wish I could stay, sir.”

 

Captain Picard nods.

 

“There is _one_ thing I’d like to do, though, if you don’t mind.” I admit with a grin. Deanna already agreed, and she's laughing at the thought of it.

 

“Really? What’s that?”

 

***

 

The Skin of Evil wakes up to a firework dropped on top of it.

 

The reaction is _beautiful_ , all hissing and rising up. “Remember me?” I ask with a grin.

 

“ _Youuuu_.”

 

“Meet my tazer.”


End file.
